Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, the researcher is trying to discuss background of the study, statements of the problem, purpose of the study, significance of the study, scope and limitation of the study and definition of the key terms. Each will be as below.

1.1 Background of the Study

Being able to speak in the target language is considered as one of the indicators that every learner is mastering the target language. Likewise in English, the learners are called to acquire the language well if they are able to produce some words orally and communicate English properly. In line with the important of spoken language, Omoniyi 2010 has stated, “Proficiency in English as a communication skill is perceived as a crucial skill for survival” pp. 23. The demand of mastering English speaking ability not only comes from the internal place of education where the study tooknplace but also comes from the external factors of educational sector. For example; in the educational sector such as school and university, the ability of speaking English is important to help students having better communication to gain a knowledge from foreigners who recently the number of their involvement in our education greatly increase. Another example is in non-educational sector; currently, many local companies build its relation with foreign company to develop its business range. This situation requires companies to use English as a working language because in multicultural business relation, the possibilities of working with foreigner are inevitable. The result is that many job occupancies, whether it is specific in 2 foreign company or local company and even educational based, required another additional basic skill, that of English speaking ability. Nowadays there are lots of methods used to teach speaking such as using Total physical response, The silent way, Community language learning, suggestopedia, group discussion, speaking games, role play and debating. Each method has different strength to interest learners to learn speaking. First, group discussion is a good practice to study together and courage learners bravery to work and share their idea with others. Second, speaking games has it strength to package a process of teaching and learning in fun way. Third, role play has it powers of asking students in performing and action and creates an interesting act while they are learning. According to the above examples, then, debate has its power to develop students critical thinking and also speaking by working in a group. Most of the method has its power to develop learners speaking ability and some of the techniques have been proven its effectiveness to develop learners speaking ability. For the example, the research on group discussion held by Ibnu Wahyu at Bahasa Indonesia ESP class in the University of Muhammadiyah Malang 2009. Ibnu’s research shows that group discussion may improve the student’s fluency in speaking. Before talking further about the effective teaching method used to teach speaking, we need to know the problem that commonly appear in speaking class. In his book Thornbury 2007 said that, “ the problem of speaking ability come from the students themselves; such as problem in expressing an idea, always repeating the same sentence, limiting vocabulary and lack of confidence” pp.27-28. To solve the 3 problem, Rybold 2006 suggest, “ the use of debate as an effective way to teach speaking will help learners to overcome their fear and develop oral English skills” pp. 2. According to Steinberg 2008 debate is “ process of inquiry and advocacy, a way of arriving at a reasoned judgment to preposition”pp.6. People debate by explaining a concept of idea using a persuasive manner through his ability of speaking. The concept of debate is not only focus in developing the critical thinking but it does also can be expanded to the field of educational aspect in which teaching English skills especially speaking. The teaching of academic debating is not a new method that lecturers used to teach in class. Many lectures sometimes used this way to teach English to their students. Teaching academic debating is not only used by the lecturers to teach students in class but also in several places such as student’s unit activity which focused in developing English skill. In students’ unit activity, the process of teaching academic debating is completely different compare with the teaching academic debating that used by lecturer to teach in class. This could happen because students’ unit activity which has debating club only focused in teaching debating while in a real class we cannot use only one method to teach learners because real class has more heterogenic learners and interest and they are not focus in only learning debating. This fact can implicitly show us that the academic debating method that is used by debating club to teach English especially speaking is more varieties and specific compare to the academic debating method used in the regular English majoring class. 4 Recently, debate is being popular and famous in our country. This popularity is proved by the increase in number of debating club and debating event in the last three years. The learners interest in joining debating raise up because many of learners want to have a good English ability especially speaking like what debaters have after learning academic debating. ILF International Language Forum is the one of the student’s unit activity which has known as the most active and proficient English debating club at the University of Muhammadiyah Malang. Furthermore, ILF has various activities to develop their members English skill, such as debating, conversation, news casting, speech and scrabble. From several activities that ILF provides to increase their member’s English skill, debating is the most dominant activity that is followed most by the members. The member’s interest in joining debating class gradually increases because they were motivated to have good English like the registered debating class member. Furthermore many learners want to get achievements from debating because ILF debater’s often won in several debating competition. In the purpose to know more about debating in detail, there were several researches which had been conducted. O ne of them is Nafsiyah’s research held in ILF at the University of Muhammadiyah Malang. In her research, Nafsiyah 2011 focused on language style used by debaters. In the research, it was found that debaters used several language styles, such as formal style, consultative, intimate style, casual and frozen. Following the previous research and to know further how the teaching method play in this field of study, this present study is going to investigate one step 5 forward from linguistic field by finding out the method of teaching speaking using academic debating used by ILF debating club at the university of Muhammadiyah Malang. This research could be considered as a new reference of finding out a new method in teaching speaking using academic debating. This research is still limited particularly on academic debating teaching method only.

1.2 Statement of the Problems